


Idyll For a Blackened Pine

by Lady_Viola_Delesseps



Category: Barkskins (TV)
Genre: Alice deserved better, F/M, Hamish/Renardette, Renardette is sixteen so nobody lose their wigs its the 1600's, but it is a labor of love, probably supernatural elements, slow burn and disordered narration, suitably graphic material from the show, there is lots of angst and pining, this is for such a niche community, what can I say hamish goames got in my mind and his little journal is filled with more than we think, yvon is a national treasure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-19 05:21:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29745600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Viola_Delesseps/pseuds/Lady_Viola_Delesseps
Summary: It was unknown how the word first began to get about, but once it had begun, the small settlement of Wobik were all babbling of it at once within the space of a single dawning and dusking: Hamish Goames, the Hudson's Bay man who was not from The Hudson's Bay Company, who had been shot dead and yet lived, was searching for a wife.
Relationships: Hamish Goames & Renardette
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First time posting on here in years, Hamish Goames came with his little journal and ruined my life. Feel free to message with any questions, concerns, posting will be slow due to real life, but I have a very specific direction this ship is headed, so climb on in and grab a paddle.

It was unknown how the word first began to get about, but once it had begun, the small settlement of Wobik were all babbling of it at once within the space of a single dawning and dusking: Hamish Goames, the Hudson's Bay man who was not from The Hudson's Bay Company, who had been shot dead and yet lived, was searching for a wife.  
  
Hamish himself was uncertain whence the rumor began but as it gained traction, in the irony of the unspoken which has finally been granted the light of day, he allowed it to pervade the settlement. Indeed what could he do to stop a wildfire as it rushed through dry tinder? A wife would do him good, a wife may not tie him down as many had threatened, a wife could perhaps add to his happiness. A warmth at the hearth and the light in the eyes, a mind to encourage and a heart to share, such things Yvon had given to him and could give him no more. There were things a man required that even a closest friend could not give. It was not spoken of between the two men, but the shift was there, kindled in their separation and lighted by the rumor as Yvon regarded him with a somber look, the faintest shadow of a smile lingering behind his eyes. Yvon was not the type, he had said, he could not and would not, he was married to his poetry, his books, his reading, as Hamish had been. "But it may not be forever. Even an academic can become a widower to the world of knowledge." As ever, Yvon's words were apt. And the rumors continued to spread.  
  
The filles du roi had been duly allotted to their chosen homes, Marguerite de Trepagny to her isolated finery and madcap overlord, Delphine to her love of the dubious Englishman and his irreproachable beard. Isabella had been taken in by a woman with seven small children to assist in their care while her search for a husband went on, and Charlotte had married a trapper and given him two children in two years. Delphine received one letter from her in that time, then no more. Marguerite and Anne had also both married to men with ill-looking faces and large hands, and each swore he had a kind heart and judging by burgeoning aprons and tired eyes they submitted well to the duty a wife owed her husband, and Hamish Goames himself nodded and held the gate for their passage, wordlessly recalling his sister's own toil with her child. Alice had been delicate before motherhood, in emotion, if not also in body, and Cross had nearly broken her in more ways than one. His blood boiled to see the man who had swore to protect her be turned into a brute by the savagery of his surroundings, and the knuckles of his right hand still ached at the sight of red.  
  
The suggestions were not immediate. He had nearly died, had vanished with the burning of the settlement and not emerged with the others for the slow rebuilding, returning only once he had healed from a deathly wound with more pallor to his already-colorless face, more shadows beneath his already-shadowed eyes, and a dark coat whose heavy fibers hid nearly all the blood that yet lived in the veins of a man. His reunion with Yvon had been emotional, the clatter of a musket being dropped on the new scaffolding of a rudimentary palisade, the wordless flurry of running feet and a crushing embrace that had Hamish wheezing, "Careful my friend, or you'll ruin the good needlework in my side." And yet the eyes of the housewives lingered once the return had been effected, once word got out of his intent, and daughters suddenly wore old ribbons, new nosegays, longing looks. Well-brushed skirts and tightly-regulated waists, and faint smiles that Hamish found himself returning with a feeling of unease that had nothing to do with the sutures holding together the gash beneath his ribs.  
  
"Its not as simple as it was for the filles du roi, they simply chose their lives and now must enact the stumbling steps toward their predetermined ends," Hamish murmured to Yvon, the fragrance of Mathilde's warm supper filling the air as she left them to their talk, having said only that no payment was required, for having brought Renardette back safely after a full season's turning. Hamish said nothing and the untruth there chafed him even as the girl regarded him with wide, all-seeing eyes, the understanding that he had been her savior when it had been in fact the precise opposite. The eyes he expected to see looming above him as he clawed his way with futile thrashes toward the inevitable, looking up, tunic and linen soaked heavy with his own blood, breath rattling as a weight greater than that of a river felt crushed down onto his chest, had not been hers. He had expected dark, shadowless eyes, endless and black, not holding the kindness of Yvon's, the justice, the veracity, eyes that shone only with anger and bloodlust, and yet above him stood a girl, slight in her youth, a youth whose weight he had held in his arms, streaked in dirt, and as draggled as a lost handkerchief. Eyes a bright, clear blue as she looked wordlessly down upon him without alarm, made no move to contain the heavy gush of blood from beneath his trembling hands, and simply crouched beside him to drag his arm over her shoulders after the Iroquois fell. For one so small, she had almost an otherwordly strength.  
  
He could sense the purpose emanating from her even as their steps flaggered and more than once his knees nearly found the cold, hard ground once more, the pale of her dress, the narrow pintucks at the gathered waist, the tear near the hem which flapped over his wavering knees as they stumbled etched into his memory. Too, the steady sound of cloth ripping as she divested him of his coat, and slowly but surely cut his linen from him, the coldness of the crumbled cabin's air rushing over his blood-soaked chest. The roof was mere rafters, the hearth broken stone, the flooring dirt, and the wind bitter as she heated water, staunched the bleeding with cloth soaked in the scalding boil, felt of the exposed muscle and organ as if she were preparing a rabbit for a stew, and began to stitch. His consciousness faded for the season following. Scalding broth dripped down his throat, the weave of the star cycles above them, the shiver of bitter nights and the warmth of a massive pelt she put over him to stave off the fever. Bitter teas, noxious brews, bandages soaked through with every color the gunshot could weep. And gradually, the fever subsided. He could feel the rasp of beard when he lifted his weak hand to his face, could feel the sharp knot of the uneven earth digging into his hip. The warmth of the girl creeping beneath the pelt, back to him, light hair scattered over the darkness of the furs. When she came and went he knew not. How he drank, how he lived, how he could no longer see the stars above them as she thatched the roof overhead and ate with the ravenous abandon of a wild creature and spoke no words, touching him with silent, learned hands.  
  
Only when the warmth returned to the sunrise and his strength to his legs did they begin to walk, short distances at first, and then longer, and when his legs faltered, when his wound would give him pain, she would sit where they were and regard him with a round, unbashed stare. Alice's eyes had been a wide, warm brown, veiled in heavy lashes like a doe, with glossy, waving hair. Renardette, as they called her, had the freckle-scattered face of a younger lass even as her height and fullness came, and her was an hair an indifferent flax, eyes clear like cold water, keen and penetrating. He never saw her smile, even when they walked slowly toward the new Wobik and Mathilde heard the shouts and came running to extricate him from Yvon's arms and weep into his neck, returning to Renardette and stroking her hair, the girl's embrace softening into Mathilde's, face a still mask of the silent year they'd kept. She'd counted fourteen seasons before the burning, and a fifteenth in Wobik; the lost season brought her to womanhood and yet she did not want it, allowing Mathilde to plait her hair because it brought Mathilde comfort, even while she murmured over her. "My little Renardette, my clever little fox. My darling girl, emerging from the ash yet again with a life saved in spite of your own. Did you owe it to him for bringing you to me? Now he has done it again." And Hamish looked at Yvon and said nothing, the feeling he committed to his journal best ascribed as _guilt_.  
  
_It is not that it troubles me so for our positions to be reversed, I held her as she was as lifeless as one from whom the spirit has already flown, and she in turn nursed me through the long winter of fever and pain. I am certain that my wound itself cannot be the source of this weight in my heart, and I must simply determine that it is a great injustice that some think I saved the child and kept her safe for return when she instead worked tirelessly over me through nights of which I have no memory. Her steadfastness and knowledge of the healing arts, be they medicinal or witchcraft in origin, I care not as yet. The mark she holds is a pigmentation of the skin from birth, one over which the superstitious father was eager to cry Satan, but her silence is from the great hurt to her soul, the mark to her skin a mere freckle taking over more than its allotted place. The origin of her skill is unknown, though it could have been learned from a mother at one time, uncanny yet not supernatural, arcane yet not cabalistic. It is a thing which irks a man such as myself beyond measure; a thing which has happened, but cannot be explained. Some have made the same compare of love, for which my unwitting search seems to have begun._  
  
It took the first outright proposition for Hamish to realize the mistake he had inadvertently made by letting the rumors thus spread. The desperate look of the trapper's wife who thrust at him a child far too young as the plumes of smoke rose from the stoop just outside haunted Hamish's words as he spoke aloud. "I cannot take your child. Saving a girl from a burned settlement when she had no words to speak of her hurt is a very different matter than taking a girl from a family and making her into a bride." The confusion reflected there in the trapper's wife's eyes recalled Hamish to the situation, that outside of Wobik, rumors may have spread of a Hudson's Bay man seeking a wife, but not of the eerily silent lass who had been plucked from the yawn of death and bore the mark of a fox. It was only the first inkling of where Hamish found his mind lingering when the others stopped him in the streets to introduce a Louise, a Jeanne, and multiple Maries. For a settlement as small as Wobik had been, gawking at the arrival of the filles du roi, the shift was tangible in a mere few years; daughters now eligible, and longing to reverse the pilgrimage they had made to this harsh new world. If they could come and survive in the arms of a woodcutter, perhaps their daughters could marry the dark-haired, dark-eyed figure from the old world and be taken home once again.  
  
The second proposition, an assumption made over the dinner table at the inn as Yvon lounged near at hand smiling over his poetry, brought Hamish an even more troubling revelation. One of the men with a daughter who had a sturdy aspect and a willing smile thudded Hamish on the back hard enough to provoke an ache in his ribs, and flashing the broad grin his daughter had inherited, asked, "Is it true you are to wed? Am I to expect sons with black hair for my Annette?" And at her name, the young woman smiled warmly from across the room, warming something in Hamish's belly that had nothing to do with the hearty supper, thinking perhaps that coming to know a woman over ones own hearth, ones own table, ones own pillown perhaps may not be as repugnant as he had at first thought. Death came swift and with no warnings, and time spent waffling was time spent stumbling toward a childless grave with no security, no legacy, and no hope. The touch at his shoulder had him breaking free from those thoughts, turning and expecting Yvon, his subconscious soul recognizing a touch which he knew, and blinking slowly up at the wordless figure of Renardette, who gestured to his empty trencher even as Hamish hastened to place it into her hands. The warmth of the smiling daughter's gesture had instantly gone cold within him, and he could feel Yvon's eyes on him as Renardette departed, a gaze that remained steady as he turned back to the jovial look of his expectant table-mate. "Perhaps your sons will have fair hair, a man does not have a say in acts of God," he responded with a cursory nod, rising and taking his hat, Yvon following suit as they returned to their rooms upstairs.  
  
That night, Hamish Goames dreamed of warmth surrounding and encompassing him like the weight of a fine pelt, the color a bright ochre orange like the tail of a fox.


	2. Chapter 2

The water shimmered with the faintest fractals of light attempting to valiantly burn their way through the heavy cloaking of fog, flat matte greys and blues, whites and grey again as the girl poured the flagon into a larger iron vessel and waited for the flames to lick their hungry tongues around its base. The air was heavy, damp, pervading the clothing she wore, torn and painted in blood that was more his than her own, his, and the one who had fallen, his life spurting from beneath the arrowhead she had plunged into his throat. Somehow, it did not trouble her. Blood, such she had seen more abundantly than even that fateful day, she was immune to, her own, and his. Yet the acrid smoke of the woodfire choked her lungs, lungs that had scarcely yet begun to be corseted, bound by the fingers of a worldly mind that reached even across the ocean and constrained young ribs into a form deemed suitable, womanly, and brought tears to her eyes that she let fall, catching the light, into the slow scatter of the kettle's simmering.

It had come at night, when the fire had burned down to embers and she had been rolled into her own blankets, hay mattress dragged out before the fire, her brother and sister curled at her back, kicking heedlessly at the constraint of the bedding in their sleep. She'd turned onto her back to escape a particularly wakeful limb, brow furrowed, handing back the cat with the newly-stitched whiskers to the small girl's sleep-numb hands, when the sting of falling thatch burned her eyes and she pushed herself upright, breath drawing in, the heel of her hand pressing to the grit in her vision. The rest began to filter back in hellish fragments – the low cry of the _engoulevent bois-pourri_ , the rush of hasty, silenced feet, and then the sound of the wooden door being split from its hinges, the cries of her mother, brother... Others. Father Clape. Her own cries she never heard, only saw the flare of the fire as it began to consume the cabin, and felt the cold air rush around her bare legs as she ran in her shift through the frigid night. The lap of the river's water guided her away from the reflected orange, beneath the clothesline which had been torn, hearing only the yip and call of unknown voices.

The trees were alive with moving figures, painted and swift, silent and sudden, and the hellish sight of the forest illumining in the fires of her cabin, the good Father's, the boy Gilles with whom she had played with her brothers, and she felt her foot catch on something solid, sending her sprawling. The solidity was not harsh enough to be a fallen log, and in the ragged snatch of her own breath, she heard the muffled sound of garbled words, cries for help, a language she knew yet could not comprehend. A hand reached out toward her, charred and deformed, the whites of the man's eyes rimmed in a red she could see by the light of the fires, and she turned and fled. Onward, and onward, until her ribs cried out from sucking in great draws of icy air and she pressed her back to a moss-laden rock, hearing only running steps, the rattle of small bones on a bare, painted chest. Though she had found momentary sanctuary, her aching feet pitching her forward as she stood, hand meeting something warm in the underbrush, coated in thick, warm liquid. Her father's twisted form lay covered in trampled ferns, and she staggered to her feet, forcing her legs onwards until she was surrounded in trees, nothing but trees and leaned into the lurid bark of a pale, peeling birch, fingers trembling as they grasped the low branches, and began to climb.

Words did not come to her lips after that, nor did sleep to her scorched and weary form. The cold of the night numbed her hands until they hurt, then felt nothing, and then hurt again, and the ache began in her forearms, then her shoulders, weary limbs forcing an ungainly descent to the cold earth where the thorns tore her legs until they bled, dark blood clotting itself with the soil of the ground and the needles of the pines. She heard nothing after that, until the rattling breath of the good Father as he trembled and cried out, walking like a skeleton clad in someone else's skin, and saw the approach of two men with rifles - a dark figure, and another - without even strength enough, will enough to take alarm. Crumpled on the ground, breath in her belly pressing into the tops of legs so cold they scarcely felt alive as she doubled over, her gaze lifted halfway up the figure in the dark hat's waistcoat before she remembered nothing further, warmth enveloping her, the sway of her own feet in the cold, and the feeling of being weightless, carried by a figure she neither knew nor could fight. The breath in his chest met her ribs with each footfall, and the hubbub of voices around them filtered through to her mind as if behind a heavy curtain, muffled and incomprehensible, and her eyes remained shut as her hair was swept off her neck, and voices she did not know discussed witchcraft, curses, cheek pressed into the rough wool of a black overcoat.

It seemed to have been the mere day before she had brushed her hands through ferns, trailed delicate lines through the river, wrapped cheeses and stitched playthings, feeling the jostle of her brother, the laughter of her sister, and her own voice calling out as they gathered into the cabin for the night. Her mother's eyes she could not remember, nor her father's voice, seeing only the flash of lurid flame, the heavy tack of blood. Her sister's smile of tiny, snaggled childish teeth, her brother's clever hnads, her father's embrace, her mother's songs, all jumbled together into a mind too addled to form words, even when questions came simply from Mathilde. _What was her name. Was she hurt._ She had not been hurt, she knew, even as the bathwater ran red from her own blood, she knew her name. She could not say it, the sound eluding her the moment she attempted to summon the strength from her chest to push the word to the tip of her tongue. It was short. Nothing to the long epithet Mathilde gave her, referencing a mark on her skin, one no one had ever seen fit to tell her of before. If they had, it had been forgotten along with everything else turned to ash in the woods.

What was not forgotten was the throng of fear through her veins, a fear that she relished to see reflected back in glossy black eyes that stood over the figure of the man who had once been her savior. What came without a single effort was the slow, faint smile that spread over her features as she felt the enemy's lifeblood flow over her hand, reached for the heavy arm of the dark-haired man, pulled him to his feet, and brought him to the rubble of the place blacked out in her own charred memory. The mattresses were gone, but the sheeting was not, and piled over pine it cushioned a rude bed. Kettles did not burn, water was easily heated, and small, cold hands probed the depths of his wound to ensure the ball had passed cleanly through. No one had taught her thus, it came simply to her mind, as did the slow even stitches, like whiskers on a cloth cat. Bandages were torn from the sheeting beneath him, and his blood-soaked linen, blanched in boiling water, of which there was plenty. She spent days huddled beneath trees awaiting the passing of a creature suitable for their food, and slew it with a silent swiftness she had seen in those who killed the ones she knew. The pelt was warm, the meat strong, and the broth hearty, and she slept curled into the warmth of the man's side.

The first true safety she had known since the flames had consumed the cabin came in the blackened footprint of the selfsame structure, and the even cadence of his breathing stilled her pulse as it had when he first spirited her away into the mud-trodden streets of Wobik. The vibration of voice in her own throat never came, but the smile to her lips did, more than once, as he spluttered and dribbled the broth like an infant, as his face darkened with beard and his eyes brightened with fever. His breath stayed the same, slow, unperturbed by the wheel of the stars above them. And only when his brow felt cool and his gaze remained steady did the smile vanish; her work was done, and the moon shining on the waters flung its faint light up the riverbank through the fog.


End file.
